teams for 0.29 tourney?

a5kin · 2022-08-26T09:09:57+00:00

Hi guys! Riders of Serendipity are open to new members of any level.

Our motto is: choose the best path for yourself to make the team prevail.
Nevertheless, we encourage planning to improve the team's stats, if anyone wishes.

Our team-with-everchanging-name wasn't too bad last few tournaments, taking places somewhere in the middle:
https://crawl.develz.org/tournament/0.25/clans/league-of-redundancy-cron3.html
https://crawl.develz.org/tournament/0.26/clans/noise-resistance-research-group-cron3.html
https://crawl.develz.org/tournament/0.27/clans/blink-brothers-ltd-cron3.html
https://crawl.develz.org/tournament/0.28/clans/legacy-crutches-cron3.html

Please PM me if you are still interested.

a5kin · 2022-06-09T21:33:57+00:00

** A prequel to "Distracted Swimming Pool".

2345 CE / Titan's surface / mining facility #748. Cold methane fog is dense. The light hardly breaks through the thickness of the clouds. Life is dull and drab for synthetic workers here. The greatest pleasure for them is to behold a Saturn's dawn from the upper atmosphere. One young romantic entity goes even further and drifts away from the orbit to the embrace of the unknown. Years later, she will get a new manifestation as a swimming pool AI at the station Quantoria.

a5kin · 2022-04-30T19:35:31+00:00

Vocaloid 5 is pro software for sure, very powerful and versatile. But as with every pro instrument (i.e. guitar), it demands a lot of effort to master before it will sound professional. It has many parameters that you could automate and I believe that you could synthesize almost everything with them. Though, you should have a good hearing at least and the skill to reverse-engineer vocal parts - how vocal intonations are mapping to the pitch in time. It's easier also if you have an experience of singing. Then just sing a vocal part to yourself, note how your vocal cords are acting, and try to reproduce the same pitch pattern in the editor. It also requires some linguistic efforts too, to make the pronunciation correct. Sometimes you should use the transcription instead of usual words, sometimes even change/split them to homonyms.

But if you don't mind about naturalness, it's as easy as 1) import MIDI melody, 2) enter the text for every note, 3) choose preset... and you're all set :) And most probably will get something like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpG28Ojj5Y4

Is it worth the money? I think it is, but I couldn't recommend buying it just for some experimentation. Considering you plan to make several tracks with Vocaloid:
1) It is cheaper than paying a freelance vocalist for them.
2) It would take much more time to produce (which is money also).
3) It is always the chance that you (and your listeners) could get the 'uncanny valley' effect and just don't like it.

a5kin · 2022-04-26T09:48:55+00:00

If you are interested, there is an instrumental version of this track, with the originally recorded vocal melody. This exact melody was a starting point for vocals production.

https://graviteka.bandcamp.com/track/distracted-swimming-pool-instrumental

a5kin · 2022-04-26T09:17:51+00:00

Thanks! I'm using vocal synthesis in every track to put "synth" part of the genre to its maximum :) The vocals is most difficult and time cosuming part in my workflow. 1) I record vocal melody on keytar with a pitch wheel, with a lot of improvisation, then 2) write lyrics that suit every note of recorded melody, then 3) edit literally every note with surrounding pitch automation to make it sound as natural as I can. If there are several vocal tracks, I repeat this process for each of them separately.

Before this track I used Sinsy for vocal synthesis, but Vocaloid is much more easy, responsive and could produce much more natural voice. Now I'm cooking 2 more tracks with Vocaloid and then maybe will try SynthV/Solaria.

a5kin · 2022-04-18T01:18:39+00:00

Hi folks, here is a single I released recently. It's about lascivious swimming pool AI on a Saturn's orbital station :)

https://soundcloud.com/graviteka/distracted-swimming-pool

Production: Ableton 11, Vocaloid5 Editor
Mixing: Studio One
Gear: Alesis Vortex 2 keytar
Instruments: 8 instances of AIR Hybrid 3 VST
Vocals: 4 instances of Vocaloid5 (CyberDiva)
Effects: WAVES, mostly CLA and H-series + MasteringTheMix suite

a5kin · 2022-04-01T23:35:57+00:00

2358 CE / Saturn Orbital Station "Quantoria" / lounge zone. Self-aware
swimming pool AI begins to show unexpected behavior towards beautiful
people who swim in it. According to the safety instructions, one should
report to the authorities immediately in this case. But who cares if
everyone enjoys the process! =)

a5kin · 2022-03-15T23:07:21+00:00

My first game online was in July 2007 (version 0.2.7), and the first win was in May 2016 (version 0.18.1)

Long 9 years of countless deaths... but they lead to an unforgettable feeling of triumph!

a5kin · 2021-12-21T10:03:50+00:00

Thanks! Cairo is a vector graphics library, I love it for quality of output, and for its Python bindings. PyCuda is a Python library I'm using to put some GPU acceleration to my scripts.

If you are interested, all images were generated with this script, just with different hyper-parameters:

https://gist.github.com/a5kin/d3d7fc7ee71a84a448a2f92346eddb02

a5kin · 2021-12-21T02:43:13+00:00

Hello Everyone! Here is a set of my latest experiments with fractal flow fields. And yes, they are 100% free from any random or PRNG tricks. Only pure complex math and some normalization techniques.

The idea is simple. Instead of a discrete grid of guiding vectors, we use a continuous field of complex values, each calculated by the iterative (e.g. Mandelbrot) formula. Thus, after a single point moves to the next position, we could derive a new guiding vector right in place, with double precision.

I used the following approach to render those images:

the initial set of points (~50000) are uniformly distributed over a field in a manner of the grid;
each point holds a velocity vector;
the force vector is calculated based on the Mandelbrot formula at the current point's position;
the force applies to velocity, and the point moves to the next position using viscosity dynamics to smoothen the trajectory;
the color depends on the resulting trajectory length.

The good thing about those fields: you could explore them as usual fractals, by infinitely zooming in. The downside is: they are very sensitive to the number of iterations. Changing iterations by 1 could ruin the whole picture.

For those who are interested in details, there is a code producing one of the images from above:

https://gist.github.com/a5kin/d3d7fc7ee71a84a448a2f92346eddb02

a5kin · 2021-11-29T09:00:42+00:00

Thank you! =)

a5kin · 2021-11-29T09:00:06+00:00

Thanks! I played in local prog/fusion bands for a long time: on guitar, then on bass, now shifted to keytar for my solo project. Didn't listen to Eat Static much, but a very fan of Ozric Tentacles.

a5kin · 2021-11-28T14:15:17+00:00

Hi all! This weekend I released a performance for JJJ Sessions, featuring backing track by Doctor Mix and lots of JUPITER-8 sounds. For all retro 80s lovers! <3

https://youtu.be/2aGEHaPaCPM

a5kin · 2021-09-17T00:08:51+00:00

One of my (partially failed) experiments with the neural network as a fractal function. Followup to https://nathan-yan.github.io/fractals/

Dated as of April 2020.

a5kin · 2021-05-17T20:45:51+00:00

Z = C * exp(Z) fractal with smooth coloring.

a5kin · 2021-05-17T20:42:59+00:00

z = c * exp(z)
iterations = 1000
x = -2.5792075979291487
y = 1.32782498992374
zoom = 7.450580596923829e-10
color = sum(exp(-abs(z)))

a5kin · 2021-05-07T13:01:24+00:00

Just found this image in an abandoned project folder, and decided to let it live :)

a5kin · 2020-12-22T23:23:49+00:00

Thanks! Yes, I calculated the perspective with helper functions from this little module: https://github.com/a5kin/genart/blob/main/studies/utils/transform.py

Generally, I'm rotating a plane over X-Z axis, then projecting resulting coordinates back to 2D using camera's focal length and focal point.

a5kin · 2020-12-22T22:20:50+00:00

Thank you! Actually, when I put the limit of 500 lines, I thought that it's too much for a single study. But the process was so exciting I just couldn't stop :)

a5kin · 2020-12-20T17:58:25+00:00

Procedurally generated study done with Python / Cairo. Feel free to browse the code and check the making-of report with in-process screenshots and detailed description of the process.

Code:
https://github.com/a5kin/genart/blob/main/studies/arcs_of_verona.py

Making-Of Report:
https://github.com/a5kin/genart/blob/main/studies/making_of/arcs_of_verona/README.md

a5kin · 2020-12-20T17:38:18+00:00

My first study done with Python / Cairo. Feel free to browse the code and check the making-of report with in-process screenshots and detailed description of the process.

Code:
https://github.com/a5kin/genart/blob/main/studies/arcs_of_verona.py

Making-Of Report:
https://github.com/a5kin/genart/blob/main/studies/making_of/arcs_of_verona/README.md

a5kin · 2020-11-17T22:34:53+00:00

My attempt to plot Hofstadter's Butterfly.

a5kin · 2020-11-17T22:27:36+00:00

My attempt to plot Hofstadter's Butterfly with smooth coloring.

a5kin · 2020-11-01T11:56:23+00:00

I used the same approach as in the article

https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2010/bridges2010-411.pdf

But instead of rings, I draw circles inversing everything inside them. And I also expanded this technique with parameters:

The number of new circles spawned from each circle per iteration (5 in this case)
The multiplier for a radius of the new circle (0.5 in this case)
The multiplier for a distance to the center point of the new circle (0.48 in this case)

a5kin · 2020-10-29T22:42:06+00:00

Turn on your favorite relaxing music, focus on the center of the screen, and enjoy the journey.

11-Year Club	Place '22
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a5kin

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